Survivors: How to Keep Your Best People on Board After Downsizing - Hardcover

In the months following a downsizing or merger, many valued survivors (those high-performing employees the company would most like to retain) decide to leave the organization. Survivors find themselves burdened with extra work, fewer resources, and an environment of confusion and chaos. At the same time, companies themselves confront the unexpected costs of higher turnover, lower productivity, stress-related illnesses, and workplace hostility. Addressing corporate executives, human resources professionals, line managers, and organizational consultants, as well as the survivors themselves, Caplan and Teese identify three distinct survivor groups and reveal what management must do to reengage the competence, commitment, and connection of these highly valued but often overlooked employees. Adopting a best practices approach and outlining the barriers to success, Survivors: How To Keep Your Best People On Board After Downsizing presents examples from organizations, survivors, and change management practitioners that demonstrate how to boos productivity and retain top performs through four key issues: corporate history, communication, change, and transition. Survivors is essential reading for anyone with managerial responsibilities in a downsized business climate. -- Midwest Book Review

Management consultants Caplan and Teese interviewed 76 survivors on the need for "competence, connection and commitment" after downsizing. They categorize survivors as "Foot Out the Doors," who recognize "employment at will"; the "Wait and Sees," who are locked in rigid perception of their place and need to be redirected to their new roles; and the "Ride It Outs," who are past-oriented and dependent but need to become self-reliant and empowered. The authors explain that survivors need gratification, making the quality and timing of communication crucial. Management needs to make them feel secure without telling them that their jobs are secure. To that end, they recommend developing a change management plan, with a change manager, change team, and coach. Whether their recommendations will actually work in today's environment is debatable; many companies do not see the need for change management, have little skill in this area, and disregard data. For other books on this subject, see William Bridges's Managing Transitions (Addison-Wesley, 1991) and David Noer's Healing the Wounds (Jossey-Bass, 1993). Recommended for large business collections.
Peggy D. Odom, Texas Lib. Assn., Waco
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.